


Spectator Sport

by Fyre



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Implicit Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: A visit to the Globe, to the first production of Hamlet, does not go quite the way Tahani expected.
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 25
Kudos: 167





	Spectator Sport

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic is based off this exchange in 'Patty'
> 
> Janet: See those green doors? You can use them to visit any place, real or imagined. Just think about where you wanna go and what you wanna do and walk on through.  
> Tahani: So one could walk amongst the dinosaurs or witness the very first production of Hamlet at the Globe?

“You sure those skirts are big enough?”

Tahani glanced around from the green doors, then down at herself. “I can hardly go in anything less than a full hoop skirt and collar,” she said, brushing down the brocade of her corset. “One has to blend in!”

Eleanor’s lips twitched. “And the collar? Is that to stop you licking your stitches?”

“Oh, _really_!” Tahani made a face. “You’re welcome to come if you like. After all, it’s quite a momentous event, a first night in The Globe!”

“Don’t bother,” Chidi said. He was looking very dapper in a more modest cut of doublet and hose. Not quite aristocratic, but certainly not peasant-class. “I tried already.”

“Eh.” Eleanor leaned closer and kissed him firmly on the cheek. “You know I like the funny ones better. When you go for _Much Ado About Nothing_ , I’m there.”

That, Tahani had to admit, caught her by surprise. “You didn’t strike me as a Shakespeare fan, Eleanor.”

“What can I say?” Eleanor grinned. “Sarcastic ash-holes who spend all their time pretending they totally don’t like each other, then having each other’s back when everything goes to hell? I dig that.”

Chidi made that rather adorable expression one sometimes got when looking at a puppy. “I love you.”

Eleanor… what was the term again? Finger-gunned? Yes! Eleanor finger-gunned at him. “Nerd,” she said, then spun away, heading off back into the Good Place proper.

“You two really are quite something,” Tahani said, smiling.

He ducked his head, grinning, then offered his arm. “Shall we?”

“Good sir.” She laid her hand on his arm at once, and together, they stepped through the door.

The smell was the first thing that hit her. It was so very… authentic. Of course, The Globe _was_ beside the river, but one tended to forget that the Thames had been something of public sewer in times gone by.

“You can will it away,” Chidi muttered, as if he could read her mind. “Think of something you’d prefer.”

At once, Channel Number 5 wafted across her senses, accompanied by the scent of the fresh grass and champagne at the Beckham mansion. “Ah. Much…” She paused, frowning, as she looked around. “Is this _it_?”

“Yeah…” Chidi was frowning too.

The place was deserted but for a few patrons milling about below. Yes, they had materialised in one of the seats beside the stage on the upper level of the theatre, but every seat around them was completely empty. Even in the forecourt in front of the stage, there were only two or three people.

“This can’t be right.”

“Maybe it hasn’t started yet?” Chidi suggested. “How about we go down and see?”

The one very unfortunate part of wearing a hoop quite so large was the stairs. Carefully – and with Chidi generously and accidentally providing a buffer when she missed a step – they made their way down, almost colliding with a red-haired man in black velvet as they made their way into the stalls.

“He seems… very important to be here,” she muttered to Chidi. “Look at that doublet.”

“I’m gonna have to take your word for it.”

“Nobility, if I’m to take a guess,” she murmured. The cut of the clothing, to say nothing of the quality of the cloth and embroidery, was a dead giveaway. And, oddly enough, still not quite as tailored as the gentleman he had approached in the stalls. How very peculiar. Two men of a clearly high rank loitering in the pit like the groundlings.

“Oh! Look! We didn’t miss it!”

“Hm?” Tahani couldn’t help eyeing the men. There seemed to be some kind of clandestine meeting happening, the darker of the two circling the other, watchful and wary.

“The play!” Chidi tugged her elbow. “That’s… oh… oh my God. That…. Tahani, that’s _Burbage_. We are watching _Burbage_ as Hamlet!”

“Yes, very good, darling…” She drifted a little closer, as if to pay heed to the stage, but in reality, she was dreadfully curious about the two men and whatever shenanigans they might be up to.

“This is so cool!” Chidi tugged on her sleeve again. “Right in the middle of…” He made a sputtering choked off sound and yanked her arm so hard, she had to turn, lips pursed, to chastise him, only to see precisely what he was seeing.

“Is that–”

“William Shakespeare!” Chidi squeaked. “WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. In front of me. Like right in front of me. This is the best day!”

And – oh, _that_ was interesting – approaching her two gentlemen.

With notes, apparently…

The fair-haired gentlemen seemed very amenable to both him and – oh good Lord, that really _was_ Burbage, wasn’t it? He looked awfully young and didn’t seem the least bit impressed by the turn out or the fair-haired man excitedly telling how much he was enjoying himself.

“And what does your friend think?” he demanded.

Immediately, the fair-haired man became flustered, while his black-clad companion grinned. “Oh, he’s not my friend. We’ve never met before. We don’t know each other.”

Oh, that really was very suspicious indeed.

“Chidi,” she murmured, leaning closer to her companion, “I don’t suppose you recognise either of those gentlemen?”

“Which gentlemen?” Really, his tone should have been warning enough. “Burbage? Or William frigging Shakespeare?”

Tahani raised her eyes to the open sky above them. Honestly, it was so difficult to deal with star-struck people. Once you had met and seen one celebrity, it did become rather blasé. “Never mind, darling,” she said, patting him on the arm. “You… enjoy yourself.”

“Oh, I’m _gonna_.” Chidi bolted forward to prop his arms on the edge of the stage, standing rather embarrassingly close to Shakespeare – at whom he kept shooting admiring look – and gazing delightedly up at Burbage.

As casually as she could – which was spectacularly so. One didn’t manage some of the most tempestuous dinner guests without knowing how to approach and oil troubled waters unseen – she drifted closer to the two gentlemen.

“–up to no good.”

“Obviously,” the black-clad man said. “You’re up to good, I take it.” There was a gentle mockery in his tone. “Lots of good deeds?”

“No rest for the… well… good,” the fair-haired man said, staring pointedly ahead as the black-clad man circled around him again. He leaned sideways a little and Tahani inched ever closer. “I have to be in Edinburgh at the end of the week. Couple of blessings to do.”

Blessings? Oh that was… that couldn’t be right. No Priest would dress like _that_. Well, aside from the Pope, but that was a special exception.

“A minor miracle to perform.”

Oh. No. No, wait, this was something else entirely.

When the black-clad man’s eyes passed her way, she made a show of buying a rather forlorn little orange from the woman with the tray.

By the time she got close enough again to hear them talking, the topic had somehow changed to some business transaction. The arrangement, the black-clad man called it. How very cloak-and-dagger!

“Don’t say that!”

Black-clad didn’t seem as concerned. “Our respective head offices don’t actually care how things get done. They just want to know they can cross it off the list.”

“But if Hell finds out, they won’t just be angry–”

Tahani froze, heart dropping like a rock. Hell. Hell in a time before the newly-restructured system, before the Good Place changed, before co-operation and Michael’s defection and everything else in between.

She hurried – surreptitiously – towards Chidi, quite the feat in a skirt four times as wide as she was, and tugged his sleeve. “We have to _go_.”

“But he’s just finishing ‘to be or not to be’,” he protested.

“There is a _demon_ here. Maybe more than one.”

Chidi tore his eyes from her. “What? Here? Watching the play?”

She rolled her eyes in the direction of the two suspicious not-men. “Over there. One of them at least is definitely demonic. I don’t think it’s wise for us to loiter.”

Chidi made a fretful sound – he had quite a catalogue of those. “But this – it’s only a memory of the place, it’s not really… I mean, they wouldn’t put us in danger. It’s kind of like a copy of it. Isn’t it?”

“Do you want to take that risk?” she demanded in an undertone. “If I’m mistaken, we can come back after we check with Janet. If not, do you really want to take the chance that we are actually here, somewhere in the Jeremy Bearimy with two demons who don’t know the system has changed?”

Chidi stared at her. “Oh God. I didn’t even think of that.” He nodded. “We should go. Now. Quickly. Before…” He stared beyond her shoulder. “Oh God, where’d the other one go?”

Tahani spun around, almost knocking him over with the damned silly skirts. Only the fair-haired man was there, smiling in a quite satisfied way. “Oh. Oh dear. We better go before we get caught. Back upstairs to the green door.”

“Yeah. Good idea.”

They rushed out through the swinging doors, only to stop dead as a lean figure swung out of the shadows.

“Funny thing,” the black-clad demon said, taking off his dark glasses and revealing golden eyes that looked more like a reptile than a human. “I can sense humans and you two…” He smiled, showing very white, very sharp teeth. “You two are definitely not human. So here you are, spying on me, and I want to know why.”

It was one thing to face an unknown demon, it was quite another to be insulted by one.

“I _beg_ your pardon! I was, am and remain utterly human.”

“Tahani…” Chidi was pulling on her arm, towards the stairs.

“Don’t ‘Tahani’ me,” she snapped. “I’m not going to stand here and let some overdressed upstart discredit my human credentials.”

“You said he was a… an emon-day.”

“Ohhhh! You know that do you?” The demon grinned at them. “Well, that makes things easier.” He sauntered closer, swaying far more than any human had any need to. “Who sent you?”

“Sent? No one _sent_ us. We came to see the play!” Chidi protested. “Look, we’re leaving and you can leave. No harm, no foul, right?”

The demon raised his eyebrows. “To see the play, eh? Doesn’t explain why this non-human was sneaking up close and watching my friend and I.”

“She’s just– she likes– she can’t help–”

“I’m nosy, is what he’s trying to say,” Tahani said sharply. “And can you blame me? You were acting very suspiciously. And meeting in such an obvious place. For Heaven’s sake, you could have met somewhere less public and worn considerably more subtle clothing, couldn’t you?”

The demon was looking more and more amused by the moment. “Where’d’you come from, then? I mean, you’re _obviously_ not human. Not demon or angel either.”

“For the last time, I _am_ human!” Tahani exclaimed, outraged. “I’m just rather… dead.”

“Ahhhh.” The demon grimaced. “Of course. Bloody Jeremy Bearimy.” He narrowd his eyes. “You’re from the Good Place, then?”

“Do you think _Hell_ would just let us wander out to see the play?” she huffed, hands on her considerably more ample-than-usual hips. “Honestly…”

He studied her. “No. They wouldn’t.” His grin widened. “Actually, you two could do me a favour.”

“And _why_ would we do that?”

“You’re dead and you came back to see this play, which means it has to be a success, correct?”

“Well… yes.”

“Yeah, about that,” Chidi added, leaning closer. “This _doesn’t_ look like a success. What _happened_?”

The demon made a face. “Shakespeare’s gloomy ones never do all that well, but my friend in there… I promised him I’d make sure this one took off. Only…” He sighed. “Look, I can do all the miracles in the world, but some things are beyond me. Getting people to sit through deathfest plays about indecisive students is pushing it. But if I had a little… help.”

Tahani stared at him. “What are you asking?”

“He wants us to fill the seats,” Chidi said slowly. “That’s it, isn’t it? We can get dozens of people in here, willingly. People who will be excited to see it all.”

“Smart lad,” the demon said, nodding. “As many people as you can bring. I’ll still do my side, but honestly, this is a _big_ job.”

Tahani chewed her lip. “That’s all? Bring in enough people to make this play a success? But he’s _Shakespeare_.”

“Everyone has a bad day,” the demon said with a shrug, sliding his glasses back on. “D’you want to see it flop?”

“Of course not!” Chidi exclaimed. “It’s a perfect representation of the concept of moral philosophy and the difficulty of ethical action.”

The demon snorted. “Philosopher?”

“Um.”

“Let’s say we do this,” Tahani cut across him. “Why do you want it to be a success? Demons don’t just do things for ‘friends’. We’ve met plenty of them and they were all self-absorbed, shallow, cruel creatures.”

“Well, yeah,” the demon agreed, “S’true.”

“And yet, you’re doing it for a ‘friend’. Off the books, I suspect.”

For a moment, the demon looked completely flustered, not unlike Michael when they gave him his human starter kit, both abashed and pleased. “Er.”

She reached out and patted his arm. “Say no more. We’ll make sure plenty of people pop in.”

“Off the books,” he warned. “Just… no one can know.”

She drew a quick heart on her corset. “Of course, darling. Wouldn’t want to ruin your surprise for your friend.”

“Um… Tahani…”

She swept around, catching Chidi by the arm. “Come along, Chidi. We need to gather more of an audience. This show will be the most successful run I have ever sponsored and that doesn’t include that stint that Mariah Carey did at the O2 in 2015.”

“But he’s a demon,” Chidi protested as she hustled him up the stairs.

“And he wants to make Hamlet a success to make his friend happy,” she countered. “This is no different than you donning the postal uniform for Eleanor.” Chidi sputtered, so she steamrollered on. “And don’t you want to be the reason Hamlet is so famous? Imagine knowing that you helped make it the marvel that it is.”

His steps faltered. “Me?”

“Us,” she corrected. “We simply need to encourage everyone to come and see it at once. Tell them how marvellous it is. Fill every seat. And it won’t be false advertising because we know how well it will do, don’t we?”

Chidi grinned. “You’ve missed this, haven’t you? Running an event?”

She blushed – just enough, not too much. “Well… maybe a little.” She shooed him on ahead towards the door. “Come on! We have lots to do! We have a Shakespeare play to save!”

And that’s precisely what they did.


End file.
